We Have to Be on Guard About False Solutions for Climate Change

Martin also highlights the burdensome conditions, which are likely to accompany any adaptation finance that is offered. “They don’t want to give the money and the little money that there will be is going to have too many conditions.” He suspects donors will demand strict requirements which Bolivia may struggle to meet, or which will heavily restrict how Bolivia can use the funds. He also fears donors could use the promise of funds to meddle with national policies. Aid conditionality is a sensitive topic in Bolivia, a country that has a long and bitter history of interference by outside actors, including World Bank-backed neoliberal reforms which were fiercely resisted across the country. It is perhaps not surprising that many Bolivians are far from enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming more reliant on foreign donors. 

But Martin’s biggest reservation is that unless rapid cuts in emissions are achieved soon it will simply be impossible to adapt to the scale and pace of the resulting impacts. “With these scenarios (of four degrees warming or more) there isn’t going to be any adaptation infrastructure that will be capable of limiting the impacts of climate change, as the climate’s variability - the imbalances, the rains, the droughts - is going to be so severe that it will be very difficult to plan adaptation actions against these scenarios. Such actions are going to have their limitations and be insufficient,” he says.

Martin is concerned that “the whole issue of climate change is becoming limited to a focus on adaptation, which means they are not tackling the structural causes of climate change.”  For him and many other civil society groups in Bolivia, the increasing focus on adaptation internationally misses the point and could even be a dangerous distraction by easing the pressure on developed countries and further delaying mitigation action. Ely Peredo of Fundación Solón is another prominent Bolivian campaigner. “I totally agree that the developed countries have to pay for their responsibility,” she explains, “but it is fundamental that we begin to change the development paradigm. It is very difficult to see how by only obtaining funds for adaptation we are going to resolve the problem. Even if we get funds for adaptation the problem is going to continue if we do not change really radically the way we currently live and coexist together.”  

The Bolivian government’s negotiating position has also focussed primarily on the need for developed countries to make rapid emissions cuts. You are unlikely to find the Bolivian delegation in Doha enthusiastically welcoming promises of adaptation finance. Like the countries vulnerable to sea level rise that make up the Alliance of Small Island States , it seems that Bolivia risks losing far more from climate change than it has to gain from receiving adaptation support.

There is no doubt that international finance for adaptation will be important in helping vulnerable communities like those living around Illimani cope with climate change. But many in Bolivia hope adaptation is not seen as an alternative to urgent emission reductions. Even if funding for adaptation materializes (which many doubt), it will not be able to compensate for the damages caused by the worst global warming scenarios, which we are currently heading towards. Some things are simply irreplaceable.